Polling began in Tanzania on Wednesday for parliamentary and presidential elections widely expected to extend the mandate of the ruling Revolutionary Party (CCM), which has already spent 44 years at the helm of the East African nation.
Voting stations across the country opened at 7am local time and polling was scheduled to end at 4pm with results expected within three days, according to an Agence France-Presse journalist.
At a voting station in the commercial capital Dar es salaam’s Buguruni primary school, voters filed in peacefully to cast their ballots while others were checking their names in the register.
About 16-million people are eligible to vote for the presidency of the union, created in 1964 between mainland Tanganyika and the Indian Ocean Zanzibar archipelago, and the 232-seat national Parliament.
Despite the impending retirement of incumbent President Benjamin Mkapa, who is constitutionally barred from seeking a third term, the polls will almost certainly see the election of CCM nominee and current Foreign Minister Jakaya Kikwete (55) to lead the Union of Tanzania, observers say.
The exercise, which was postponed from October 30 after the death of an opposition candidate, is Tanzania’s third since pluralism was restored in 1992, 31 years after the country broke free from British colonists.
Rival political parties deployed agents overnight to guard ballot boxes and papers to avoid rigging and sabotage, while police patrolled several stations across the country to maintain peace. — Sapa-AFP